Adventures of a guy in love with all kinds of flying. Gliders, turboprops, instructing in a 172, it's all fun for me.

Friday, April 1, 2016

Foolin' Around

April 1 is a special day in aviation history, at least at my house, because it is the anniversary of Flight Lesson 1. My first instructor -- I remember his name but won't mention it -- quit sometime before Flight Lesson 2 (I heard he went to United Air Lines), so I did the rest of my training with a man named Tom Carroll at Palomar Airport. Tom claimed that a pilot would hear his first flight instructor's voice for the rest of his or her career, and he was right (Tom died a few years, but in the hospital, not an airplane).

Maybe he got to teach me at a vulnerable or receptive age (late 20s), but his lessons really stuck, and I often quote him word-for-word with my students. Sometimes it even works!

But not always.

I was reminded about this the other day when I gave a BFR to a pilot who started flying just a few years before I did. Why did he appear so old? But no matter: it was clear that he was the master of this airplane and based on our talk he had mastered many others. He'd even survived a double engine failure (induction icing with a faulty alternate air design).

As we started maneuvering I almost instinctively gave him my "flaps down trim down" speech (this was in a 182; other airplanes are "flaps up trim down") but if I have learned something as an instructor it is that, at a safe altitude, you can wait and see. Sure enough, as the flaps went down the trim went down, even as he continued to slightly bawdy story about a pilot we both knew.

I trained in Archers and Warriors. Tom taught me to jam my elbow into my pelvis when lowering flaps; this enabled me to keep the nose from rising until I had a free hand to retrim. The seats in a 172 don't quite allow most people to get into a good position to do this, so I have to chant, over and over, "flaps down trim down."

I take students out and do the demonstration stalls. Near the top of the white arc, I lower full flaps all at once, and the nose rises to about as high an angle as a student ever sees, or wants to see. "If you don't do something you'll stall, and since you usually go to full flaps at low altitude, you won't recover." Or a hundred other things.

Maybe I should try to attract Tom back from the dead and have him run a flap clinic?

Or what about this: one of my friends told me that his primary instructor did not teach the use of flaps until after solo: "That's for the short- and soft-field stuff," he'd say. Then there's no worry of watching a solo student's nose rise just before turning final. Maybe he could teach us a thing or two.

So the point is that on this anniversary of a flying lesson, I think I need a flying lesson. It never ends.

Previous Posts

SAYINGS TO FLY BY
Sometimes you just have to fly towards the blue sky
Fly the airplane you're in
Pilot goes fast, airplane goes slow
Never think about money until you land
When in doubt, wind the clock